Why Med-Surg Nurses Are at the Heart of Patient Safety

Medical-Surgical Nurse Week falls on the first week of November and is just in time for the holiday healthcare rush when ORs and ERs across the nation are full of patients. During this time, as hospitals prepare for the holidays, we recognize the key role inpatient nurses play in keeping our loved ones safe—ensuring smooth and efficient care year-round. From admission to discharge, Med-Surg Nurses are on the front-lines of care making sure the patient journey progresses without delays or gaps.

Med-Surg Nurses Are Essential for Proper Care Coordination

The Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses calls the Med-Surg Nurse “the orchestra conductors, the movie producers, and the air traffic controllers of their hospital units.” Prior to and after procedures are complete, the Med-Surg Nurse is tasked with a wide range of care coordination tasks like:

• Knowledge of diagnosis
• Administering medications
• Educating family members

All these tasks need to be delivered with care and compassion in a fast-paced environment. With so much on their plate, Med-Surg Nurses cannot afford to waste time hunting down patient data or second-guessing care decisions.

For example, Charles just had his hip replaced. Now Charles is moving into an in-patient bed for recovery.  There are a number of important things a Med-Surg Nurse needs to know about Charles so they can offer the best care possible like:

• What kinds of implants did the patient receive?
• What medications were administered before and after the procedure?
• Is the patient allergic to any medications?
• What were the patient’s vitals going into surgery?

The Med-Surg Nurse also needs to be able to access this information quickly for multiple patients. When this list of patient data points grows with added complexity and the information lives in different areas it can create problems for both the patient and clinician.

For example, if Charles’ patient data is held in one central location, his Med-Surg nurses can often work with more efficiency. Improved efficiencies can result in better coordination of Charles’ care and allow his nurses to work more nurse-to-Charles rather than nurse-to-computer.

Merging Perioperative Patient Data

With smart healthcare technology integrations, all the documentation concerning a patient’s journey, leading up to, during, and post procedure can live in the same platform. Consolidation of in-patient data is a large part of ensuring patient safety, especially when considering medication schedules and dosages post-procedure.

By eliminating the hunt for paper charts, integrating an electronic medication application record (EMAR) with perioperative data can help Med-Surg Nurses:

• Reduce the amount of time searching for records
• Ensure the five rights of medication administration
• Avoid double documentation errors
• Improve cross-departmental communication

In addition to helping nurses make sure medications are being administered at the right times, MEDHOST can help streamline and consolidate the flow of patient data. Information collected by Perioperative Experience covers the entire surgical patient’s journey and places data like allergies, vitals, and lab results within one platform to help reduce switching from task to task. With less back-and-forth from one system to another, Med-Surg Nurses can prioritize safe “traffic control” while still practicing compassionate bedside manners.

Year-round Medical-Surgical Nurses, or “orchestra conductors,” across the country are hard at work protecting patients. Show your thanks to them with the gift of these tools tailored to help them do what they do best!

For more information on our suite of clinical tools visit this webpage or call us at 1.800.383.6278.